Le Héros sans Remords
by Sanctimonious Ape
Summary: Returning to the land of Hyrule long after the Crown Princess Zelda sent him into the old and wild realm of the Twilight, Link confesses his love. Oneshot. Mild Zelink, but things may not be what they seem. Based to some extent on John Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci.


**This originally began life as a present for Tiger7210 for her birthday a while back. I finished it recently and thought it would be good to upload. Here it is, I guess. I'll be interested to hear feedback, so take a shot at it.**

* * *

The wind that chased the Hero in was bitter and chill, snuffing out the foremost of the candles. Frail shadow spilled in behind him, pooling and tentatively testing the warding light. Crashing, the doors shut, and Link had an audience with Zelda.

His opening was not, "I love you," nor was it, "My idle thoughts were yours," as it should have been. Instead, it was blunt and factual, unlike the man she'd seen off with her blessing.

"It will be your coronation tomorrow, your majesty. You will be Queen instead of Crown Princess."  
Instantly, her heart tightened in her chest, the stranger's cruel vice pressing hard. He chuckled, cold and lifeless, and pale hands drew back the heavy hood that rested on his brow and threw his features into darkness.

A makeshift crown of twilight spores and twigs graced the Hero's head. A withered rose sojourned behind his elfin ear. His blond hair had brightened, and a pale sheen was across his skin. But it was his eyes that frightened Zelda.

The compassion and whimsy she knew them to be capable of were void. In their place was a strange hunger, a desire...

Lust.

"Link," she hesitated, her mouth dry.

In a parodied facsimile of a courtly gesture, he brushed back his patchwork cloak with an elegant gesture, and bowed. Beneath, he was bound in spoiled bandages. A patch of red rested above his heart, a fatal wound. His tunic, ragged and jaded, clung to him, his breeches loose. He wore a slim necklace of rubies, the angular gems marked with alien runes and wards.

"Crown Princess," he replied, icily, beginning the introductions anew. The clutter of spores fell from his locks and disintegrated as they touched the floor.

"...You've returned to us," the woman said at length, following it up with a lie, "it is good to see you at Hyrule's hearth."

Link licked his paled lips, at first silent. Those dreadful, smouldering eyes, so dark and unpredictable when before they had been bright and honest, swept the throne room with their piercing blue-grey.  
In a sudden flash of candlelight, his hazy hair was platinum, a shade or two lighter than its familiar gold, but as the fire-fuelled lustre retreated, it became only pallid and pale. In this same moment, his eyes flashed an eerie, eldritch gold, but that too was gone with the fall of the dark.

"I hadn't wished to return," he began, bluntly, "but my Lady Midna demanded it of me."

The feeling of terror tensed twofold within Zelda, as if her spirit was being tested with hooks, pulling and pulling and pulling again.

"I see," she wavered.

The Hero was ill: it was clear when his ragged breathing became a coughing fit. He rubbed a fist along his face, and coughed once more. He was more a scarecrow than a man. Link had always been one to train intensively, and it was disconcerting to see that he was beginning to lose his muscle.

"She wants me to tell you that I've decided to stay with her in the Twilight. You may fight your futile war, but I wish to be no part of it."

Those were not the words she wanted. They were worse than anything.

"No!" She, bridling with sudden frustration and a growing concern for her Hero, rose to her feet, "You," she paused, hands crunching into fists, "I need you, Link. Hyrule needs you. Link, please." The repetition of his name helped her ground the man before her in her memories. Her Hero was eager, loyal. Not this doppelganger facing her, hunched and shivering. Shying away from her eyes, he coughed, before wiping his lips with his wrist. The bandages were stained red, a little blood clustering at the corners of his mouth.

His gold eyes, shot with black threads that laced his vision into a cruel spell of his mistress, narrowed and he spat, wiping his thin, white lips again. The fire in those dreadful eyes flared into an inferno that threatened to consume the castle. Angrily, he spun on his heel, and stalked away from her, before he froze halfway across the hall, where the light did not touch his features.

"You never needed me," the Hero parried, bitter with spite, "you used me as a tool. There were thousands of men, just like me, each of whom could fill my role. You sent me out when I had nothing. I am only glad that Lady Midna saved me from the other foul beasts of the Twilight."

Over his shoulder, he challenged her with a wild, frightened stare, his eyes sharp and defensive. So he knew. The words were cold steel unsheathed, a sudden surprising stab in her abdomen. The princess recoiled, watching as her reaction twisted the Hero's frown into a dreadful smile.

"You know that isn't true. I..." she felt the familiar taste of betrayal, metallic - like blood, on her tongue.

"Don't lie to me, please don't do that," he snapped, pinching the bridge of his nose, as if her slander embarrassed him, "I'm not that _boy_ anymore."

 _Then who are you?_ She needed to scream, but his icy tone froze her in place. Taking strength from the failing candlelight, Zelda descended from the dais, ushering the guards away with a subtle wave. Behind her back, she could sense them shot a glance between them.

"Go," she croaked, the command dying and rebellious, "It is clear that the Hero and I should talk further in private." A mumble, the shiver of chainmail, they departed. The world was falling apart around her.

Link was reproachful, gathering his cloak about him, and shied away from her as she approached.  
"Why?" She demanded, drawing herself to her full height. She was only a little shorter than him, but her temper made her a giant.

"Why?" he echoed, head tipping to the side in a childlike curiosity. Perhaps he was not so sure himself. It was then his voice took on a terrible mitre, his intonation anchored in a gruff depth that Zelda had not heard before.

"I met a lady in the meads,  
full beautiful – a twilit child,  
her hair was long, her foot was light,  
and her eyes were wild."

As he said this, his pupils quivered into something feline, two thin wounds that were stitched shut with only the barest threads of gold. He looked straight at her, through her. A shudder traced the curve of her spine, and took flight across her shoulders.

"Link?" she mumbled, as he stood, silent. With a small breath, he continued, weaving a forest canopy above their heads, and deserting the throne room entirely. In the corners of Zelda's vision, the shadows began to dance. The space became eternal, feeding into itself, like a series of boxes that opened into one another.

"I made a garland for her head,  
and bracelets too, and fragrant zone;  
she looked at me as she did love,  
and made sweet moan."

The stone tiles beneath her feet and the red cloth became a carpet of deathly, curling leaves, black with mould and brown from age. She wasn't sure of the magic involved, but she knew it was more powerful than anything she herself could accomplish. Zelda spun on the spot to catalogue her surroundings, and then turned accusatory on the Hero. He challenged her with a mirthful glare. Recovering, Link then bit his lip in contempt, and said, in a vice now approaching his own again, "I fell in love with my Lady Midna. There is no _why_ about it. I wouldn't expect you to understand."

The dagger through the heart. Zelda stood motionless, wordless. Was it true? She dared not to say.

"You failed Hyrule, you failed me!" She said, fists bunched and shaking at her sides as she finally raged against him. This was what he wanted. She stabbed a finger into his frail, gently bleeding chest, and locked eyes with him. "I _trusted_ you! I was the one who saw what you could have been, and I was the one who put everything into place. I steered you to find the Master Sword, so that you might combat the Twilight, not _join_ it! You talk of love, but _you_ failed to see that I loved you!"

Silence. The longest moment. Four of the most painful minutes in her entire life.

"What did you say?" he said, in a whisper best reserved for the sweet nothings of a lover.

"I – I said I loved you."

He shook his head, furiously.

"No. No, don't lie to me anymore. Your throne is made of deceit and you -"

"I'm not lying, Link!" she exclaimed, pushing against him and throwing him back a pace. She turned away from him and hunched her shoulders.

"I loved you. There was something different about you. I didn't realise it until you were gone, but I wanted you to come back. It started with despair, really," she said, gushing now, dispelling the imagery of the autumnal forest and now bringing forth the castle amidst the blanket of the winter, "I was watching you to see where you would go wrong. But – you didn't. You were brave, and strong, and yes, maybe a little stupid at times, but that was just endearing."

"So first you say you trust me, and now you look for my failings. An odd sense of trust, Zelda."

Her name from his lips prickled her skin, but clad in the silken armour of her dress, she walked past him, and said, "You have them in the wrong order. At first, it was only a glimmer of hope I saw within you, a diamond in the rough, shall we say. It was when you surpassed the pitfalls that trust had anything to do with it."

She came to the door that Link had entered from, and briefly, she wondered how he had arrived at the castle from a private terrace bulwarked from the outside.

"So you chose your heroes one at a time." Link questioned her aloud. She didn't answer, and instead pushed at the door.

A wild thunderbolt arced behind the solid, flat wall that cut the terrace into two. It was something so alien that Zelda would have laughed it off if it wasn't the very real threat that seized her frail, twilit kingdom.

"I'm amazed you haven't been deposed, what with your pathetic attempts to counteract the Twilight," continued the Hero, with a kind of therapeutic, brutal, abrasive honesty that might have sprung from his farm boy days. To turn around and hit him, to take the bait, it would be to let her free. She laughed, a thunderclap writhing against the cold castle walls, strangely distant but amplified.

"Oh, but I have been," the future queen admitted, removing the crystalline tiara from her brow and tucking an errant brown lock behind the point of her bejewelled ear, "A neighbour state has stepped in and are reinforcing their buffer. I'm afraid that either way that this goes, there will be no Hyrule left." She examined the woman in the reflection idly, before casting her eyes to him.

Her guest took the news in stride, lightning flashing in his face. His eyes were dark and unguessable. He stepped down to the dying, shrivelled flowerbeds, the sky flaring up with glyphs as he approached: Alarums, wards, palings, each as eldritch as the other. What chance had she to fight an enemy that she didn't even know?

"I hate politics," Link spat, face turned to her accusingly, "There's always someone to make you theirs or make you miserable. And others always follow in their wake."

"What do you want, Link?" Zelda asked, quietly, gently afraid of him.

He looked to her, an ugly sneer on his face, and he said, "I've already told you. I want to spend my days in the company of my lady, Midna. And now that I have done that, I will return to the embrace of her company."

"But why did you come to tell me?"

"If I hadn't you would have put some patriotic spin on it. Given the chance, you would have told the kingdom that I died with honour, glad to have served her majesty." He spat again, perhaps half-joking, before the Hero huddled deeper into his death shroud.

Thunder.

Without really knowing what she was doing, Zelda dashed the diadem underfoot, flinging it down and smashing it against the stone. It caught Link's attention, and he turned, bemused, to face her.  
"You can't leave. I don't want you to, I won't _let_ you!" she said, tearing up.

"Zelda," her name again, soft, "I'm sorry. But… the love you have for me is not what I have for you."

He was already gone when she looked up, and she was alone on the terrace. The wind whipped her brown hair around her head. For real, this time, the Hero was gone, and had left Zelda and her kingdom to die alone, sandwiched between two greater powers. With a final roll of thunder, the lightning curiously absent, Zelda turned slowly, back into the warmth of the chamber. She cast a desperate glance over her shoulder, and then slipped into the chamber proper, hugging her arms around herself to starve off the storm.

* * *

 **I'll probably update this after a few weeks, so please make sure you get your views across if you like or dislike certain passages. Questions are welcome as well. Thanks,**

 **Ape**


End file.
